USAT Buford

	USAT Buford at Galveston harbor in 1915
History
Name	SS Mississippi (1890–1898); USAT Buford (1898–1919); USS Buford (ID 3818) (1919); USAT Buford (1919–1923); SS Buford (1923–1929);
Owner	Atlantic Transport Line (1890–1898); US Army (1898–1919); US Navy (1919); US Army (1919–1923); Alaskan Siberian Navigation Company (1923–1929);
Builder	Harland and Wolff, Belfast
Launched	29 August 1890
Commissioned	By the US Navy on 15 January 1919
Decommissioned	2 September 1919
Fate	Scrapped in 1929
General characteristics
Type	Cargo ship
Displacement	8,583 tons
Length	370 ft 8 in (112.98 m)
Beam	44 ft 2 in (13.46 m)
Draft	26 ft (7.9 m)
Depth of hold	30 ft 6 in (9.30 m)
Propulsion	one 375 nhp Harland and Wolff; triple expansion engine; with 3 cylinders of 25½", 42", and 70" diameter respectively, stroke 51",; one shaft, two double-ended boilers.;
Speed	11 knots (20 km/h)
Complement	202
Armament	2 × 3" mounts

USAT Buford was a combination cargo/passenger ship, originally launched in 1890 as the SS Mississippi. She was purchased by the US Army in 1898 for transport duty in the Spanish–American War. In 1919, she was briefly transferred to the US Navy, commissioned as the USS Buford (ID 3818), to repatriate troops home after World War I, and then later that year returned to the Army.

In December 1919, nicknamed the Soviet Ark (or the Red Ark) by the press of the day, the Buford was used by the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Labor to deport 249 non-citizens to Russia from the United States because of their alleged anarchist or syndicalist political beliefs.

She was sold to private interests in 1923, contracted in mid-1924 to be the set for Buster Keaton's silent film The Navigator, and finally scrapped in 1929.